The history of the petroleum industry in the United States goes back to the early 19th century, although the indigenous peoples, like many ancient societies, have used petroleum seeps since prehistoric times; where found, these seeps signaled the growth of the industry from the earliest discoveries to the more recent.
The Ogallala Aquifer is a shallow water table aquifer surrounded by sand, silt, clay, and gravel located beneath the Great Plains in the United States. As one of the world's largest aquifers, it underlies an area of approximately 174,000 sq mi (450,000 km2) in portions of eight states. It was named in 1898 by geologist N. H. Darton from its type locality near the town of Ogallala, Nebraska. The aquifer is part of the High Plains Aquifer System, and resides in the Ogallala Formation, which is the principal geologic unit underlying 80% of the High Plains.
Daryl Christine Hannah is an American actress and environmental activist. She made her screen debut in Brian De Palma's supernatural horror film The Fury (1978). She has starred in various movies across the years, including as Pris Stratton in Ridley Scott's science fiction thriller Blade Runner (1982) and as Cathy Featherstone in Randal Kleiser's romantic comedy Summer Lovers (1982), as the mermaid Madison in Ron Howard's fantasy-romantic comedy Splash (1984), Roxanne Kowalski in the romantic comedy Roxanne (1987), Darien Taylor in Oliver Stone's drama Wall Street (1987), and Annelle Dupuy Desoto in the comedy-drama Steel Magnolias (1989). In 2004, Hannah won a Saturn Award for her role as one-eyed assassin Elle Driver in Quentin Tarantino's two-part martial arts action film Kill Bill. In 2015, she appeared in the Netflix series Sense8 as Angelica Turing.
TC Energy Corporation is a major North American energy company, based in the TC Energy Tower building in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, that develops and operates energy infrastructure in Canada, the United States, and Mexico. The company operates three core businesses: Natural Gas Pipelines, Liquids Pipelines and Energy.
Heavy crude oil is highly-viscous oil that cannot easily flow from production wells under normal reservoir conditions.
Petroleum production in Canada is a major industry which is important to the economy of North America. Canada has the third largest oil reserves in the world and is the world's fourth largest oil producer and fourth largest oil exporter. In 2019 it produced an average of 750,000 cubic metres per day (4.7 Mbbl/d) of crude oil and equivalent. Of that amount, 64% was upgraded from unconventional oil sands, and the remainder light crude oil, heavy crude oil and natural-gas condensate. Most of Canadian petroleum production is exported, approximately 600,000 cubic metres per day (3.8 Mbbl/d) in 2019, with 98% of the exports going to the United States. Canada is by far the largest single source of oil imports to the United States, providing 43% of US crude oil imports in 2015.
Dilbit is a bitumen diluted with one or more lighter petroleum products, typically natural-gas condensates such as naphtha. Diluting bitumen makes it much easier to transport, for example in pipelines. Per the Alberta Oil Sands Bitumen Valuation Methodology, "Dilbit Blends" means "Blends made from heavy crudes and/or bitumens and a diluent, usually natural-gas condensate, for the purpose of meeting pipeline viscosity and density specifications, where the density of the diluent included in the blend is less than 800 kg/m3." If the diluent density is greater than or equal to 800 kg/m3, the diluent is typically synthetic crude and accordingly the blend is called synbit.
The Keystone Pipeline System is an oil pipeline system in Canada and the United States, commissioned in 2010 and owned by TC Energy and as of 31 March 2020, the Government of Alberta. It runs from the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin in Alberta to refineries in Illinois and Texas, and also to oil tank farms and an oil pipeline distribution center in Cushing, Oklahoma.
350.org is an international environmental organization addressing the climate crisis. Its stated goal is to end the use of fossil fuels and transition to renewable energy by building a global, grassroots movement.
The Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipelines were a project to build a twin pipeline from Bruderheim, Alberta, to Kitimat, British Columbia. The eastbound pipeline would have imported natural gas condensate and the westbound pipeline would have exported diluted bitumen from the Athabasca oil sands to a marine terminal in Kitimat for transportation to Asian markets via oil tankers. The project would have also included terminal facilities with "integrated marine infrastructure at tidewater to accommodate loading and unloading of oil and condensate tankers, and marine transportation of oil and condensate." The CA$7.9 billion project was proposed in mid-2000s and has been postponed several times. The proposed project would have been developed by Enbridge Inc., a Canadian crude oil and liquids pipeline and storage company.
The Kalamazoo River oil spill occurred in July 2010 when a pipeline operated by Enbridge burst and flowed into Talmadge Creek, a tributary of the Kalamazoo River near Marshall, Michigan. A 6-foot (1.8 m) break in the pipeline resulted in one of the largest inland oil spills in U.S. history. The pipeline carries diluted bitumen (dilbit), a heavy crude oil from Canada's Athabasca oil sands to the United States. Cleanup took five years. Following the spill, the volatile hydrocarbon diluents evaporated, leaving the heavier bitumen to sink in the water column. Thirty-five miles (56 km) of the Kalamazoo River were closed for clean-up until June 2012, when portions of the river were re-opened. On March 14, 2013, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ordered Enbridge to return to dredge portions of the river to remove submerged oil and oil-contaminated sediment.
Western Canadian Select (WCS) is a heavy sour blend of crude oil that is one of North America's largest heavy crude oil streams and, historically, its cheapest. It was established in December 2004 as a new heavy oil stream by EnCana (now Cenovus), Canadian Natural Resources, Petro-Canada (now Suncor) and Talisman Energy (now Repsol Oil & Gas Canada). It is composed mostly of bitumen blended with sweet synthetic and condensate diluents and 21 existing streams of both conventional and unconventional Alberta heavy crude oils at the large Husky Midstream General Partnership terminal in Hardisty, Alberta. Western Canadian Select—the benchmark for heavy, acidic (TAN <1.1) crudes—is one of many petroleum products from the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin oil sands. Calgary-based Husky Energy, now a subsidiary of Cenovus, had joined the initial four founders in 2015.
The 2013 Mayflower oil spill occurred on March 29, 2013, when the Pegasus Pipeline, owned by ExxonMobil and carrying Canadian Wabasca heavy crude from the Athabasca oil sands, ruptured in Mayflower, Arkansas, about 25 miles (40 km) northwest of Little Rock releasing about 3,190 barrels of oil. Approximately 3,190 barrels of oil and water mix was recovered. Twenty-two homes were evacuated. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) classified the leak as a major spill.
Tidewater is a term used by industries and governments to refer to access to ocean ports with international marine services for import and export of commodities. For export, the commodities can be shipped via trucks, trains and/or pipelines to a port, thereby opening the door to more lucrative prices on global markets. Getting to such a port is particularly important for landlocked jurisdictions seeking to expand and diversify markets for natural resources.
Bold Nebraska is a progressive political advocacy group founded by Jane Fleming Kleeb in 2010 in the state of Nebraska.
The Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer is an aquifer in Texas, United States.
Melina Laboucan-Massimo is a climate justice and Indigenous rights advocate from the Lubicon Cree community of Little Buffalo in northern Alberta, Canada. Growing up with firsthand experience of the effects of oil and gas drilling on local communities, she began advocating for an end to resource extraction in Indigenous territories but shifted focus to supporting a renewable energy transition after a ruptured pipeline spilled approximately 4.5 million litres of oil near Little Buffalo in 2011.
The Stop Line 3 protests are an ongoing series of demonstrations in the U.S. state of Minnesota against the expansion of Enbridge's Line 3 oil pipeline along a new route. Indigenous people have led the resistance to the construction of the pipeline, which began following the project's approval in November 2020. Opponents of the pipeline expansion, called water protectors, have established ceremonial lodges and resistance camps along the route of the pipeline. Enbridge has funded an escrow account that law enforcement agencies may draw on for pipeline-related police work. Organizers have arranged marches and occupations of Enbridge construction sites. Following the blockade of an Enbridge pump station on June 7, 2021, nearly 250 people were arrested. Invoking treaty rights, organizers established an encampment at the headwaters of the Mississippi River at a site where Enbridge intends to bury the pipeline.
The Keystone Pipeline oil spill occurred on December 7, 2022, when a leak in the Keystone Pipeline released 14,000 barrels of oil into a creek in Washington County, Kansas. The leak is the largest in the United States since the 2013 North Dakota pipeline spill and the largest in the history of the Keystone Pipeline.
Blockadia is a global anti-extractivism movement; and a roving, transnational conflict zone where everyday people obstruct development of extractive projects, especially in the fossil fuel industry. Blockadia resistance movements differ from mainstream environmentalism by use of confrontational tactics such as civil disobedience, mass arrests, lockdowns, and blockades to contest perceived threats arising from extractivist projects’ contributions to global climate change and local environmental injustice. Some researchers have concluded that Blockadia contributes to a transition toward a more just society.
